THE JOURNALIST CHRONICLES

Can I reliably trust you to tell me what is going on? If the answer is yes, then I don’t care if you work out of a newsroom or out of your garage.

—Robert Hernandez, professor of new media at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. For journalism’s future, the killer app is credibility. (via futurejournalismproject)

(Source: futurejournalismproject)

As reported by TorrentFreak, Wikipedia is considering the most audacious protest yet, blanking out all of its pages.

(via ideasatrandom)

ageofperil:

I don’t use online file-sharing networks to download copyrighted music and movies, not due to some position I take on the matter, but mostly because I’m paranoid about linking my computer to anything that can feasibly inject malicious software. So I didn’t hesitate to drop by the site Youhavedownloaded.com, because I knew they wouldn’t have any records of my Internet activity. Guess I took the Department of Homeland Security’s whole “Stop. Think. Connect.” cybersecurity campaign seriously.

But so seemingly powerful is the new site, I’m not providing a link to it here. You’ll have to decide whether to go there yourself. Once you do, the site will automatically check your IP address against a massive database of 50 million unique identities and spit out a list of files you may have downloaded from a file-sharing network, everything from “Pink Librarians” to “Maroon 5 Reinterprets the Christmas Classics.”

How does the site do this? Many file-trading networks are public, and the entertainment industry relies on this fact to collect information for randomly targeted lawsuits against people who are alleged to have illegally downloaded copyright-protected material. Youhavedownloaded.com is simply making it easier for the world to see this information.

As one would imagine, the site’s founders have already received panicked emails from Internet users. According to blogger Brian Krebs:

[Site founder Suren] Ter-Saakov said he’s received emails from users whose information was listed but who deny having downloaded any files (he also said people can have their information removed on request). ‘One guy claimed he downloaded stuff only because his grandmother was ill and he wanted to watch a ‘Harold & Kumar’ movie to cheer himself up,’ Ter-Saakov said. ‘Another kid wrote and asked to have his information removed because he was downloading porn and was afraid his parents would be able to see what kinds of movies he downloaded.’

Krebs adds that there are significant limitations with the database. IP addresses can be dynamic and change over time, or an address at a home or business may cover the activity of multiple users. But searching “Family.Guy” out of curiosity turned up numerous IP addresses, as seen above. We already know that relying too heavily on IP addresses for copyright-infringement lawsuits can turn unwitting elderly women into civil defendants. It’s also important to point out that the site’s creators believe they can “see” only about 20 percent of the file-sharing activity online.

(via centerforinvestigativereporting)

That’s the amount of climate change attributed specifically to man-made activities, according to a new study. More at Nature News.

 (via jtotheizzoe)

(Source: jtotheizzoe)

Thanks to a class-action lawsuit settlement, users of Ticketmaster’s website for the past decade will be getting some of those ridiculous fees back.

In a proposed class-action settlement, the company will be forced to credit $1.50 per ticket order for up to 17 orders back to customers for profiting off of “processing fees” without disclosing that fact, Business Insider reports.

Users of Ticketmaster’s site between Oct. 21, 1999 and Oct. 19, 2011 are eligible for the rebate, though nothing will happen before April 15, 2012 and payments won’t be issued until 30 days of the settlement’s final approval — which is now scheduled for May 29, 2012.

centerforinvestigativereporting:

From our homeland security reporter G.W. Schulz …

ageofperil:

It’s almost 2013, so perhaps no one should be surprised that a reality show in the works would mimic the 1996 dystopian flick “Escape From L.A.” What’s chilling is that the show is not fiction and may in the end say more about the post-Sept. 11 surveillance state than anything else so far.

Two everyday Americans will be awarded $1 million if they can successfully sneak out of Los Angeles without being detected by digital video cameras, pilotless drones, GPS monitoring devices and facial recognition technology.

Blackberry phones can be geo-located even if the battery has been removed. That’s one of many realities about privacy in the 21st century, and it’s one of the many tools a team of professional human trackers will have at their disposal for catching the two men. The trackers will reportedly work from an operations center in downtown L.A. “constructed specifically for this project.”

From Government Security News:

The highly trained team of professional pursuers is led by host and master tracker, Kevin Reeve, whose company, onPoint Tactical LLC, offers a scouting, tracking and wilderness survival skills course, which has been taken by SEALs, Rangers, FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service and other law enforcement agents.

My only question: If the two men actually succeed, would it undermine the hundreds of millions of dollars L.A. has spent securing the city since 9/11?

(via latimes)